Outreach

Each year when Thanksgiving boxes are distributed, Carol Brashears and her team of volunteers give our community recipients an opportunity to fill out a prayer request as they leave. TLC members then pray for these people. Here are two examples of what we have received:

This is the first time I have had to ask for help and it’s very hard. This is not really a prayer but a thank you because I did not believe I was about to lose my home that I worked very hard and something happened. So thank you. God bless you.
Love, Taylor & Eric.

I pray to love God and I hope He lovesme and everybody else. I hope, I hope. That’s what I want to say.

At the end of another school year, we are taking time to reflect back and thank members of a community who have supported our students’ needs. When communities and schools work together, students are more successful!

Eastern Elementary staff members are beyond appre- ciative of all the services that Trinity provided this past year to make our school a better place! We thank you for weekly nutritious Micah’s food bags and the turkeys and Thanksgiving food boxes for our students and families in need. Thanks too for the testing mints and all the prize incentives for students who receive them for showing re- spect, readiness, and responsibility.

The generous support from individuals like you made it possible for our school to better meet the needs of our students and families. Again, thank you! You truly made a difference! Looking forward to continuing our partner- ship with Trinity Lutheran Church!

Sincerely,
Vanessa Mannick, School Family Liaison

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Picking up a bag of lentils offered at our Food Pantry, the woman asked us, “How do I eat this?”

Often preparation of fresh foods given us by our local grocery is also questioned. So Tim Higgins (a dietitian, nutritionist, and chef at Meritus Medical Center) and Jeff Reed presented a three-day program at our Food Pantry, “Cooking for the Seasons,” this past November. Tim, along with Catherine Feaga, DO, a family practice physician, and Kezia Ellison, MD, a Meritus family medicine resi- dent, set up tables of food prepared for our outreach guests, using provisions provided to us by the Maryland Food

Bank. To taste and learn how to make healthy recipes with ingredients from the Food Pantry, guests were shown the products before use (in this case lentils, pork loin, rice, green peppers, peas), the recipes to follow, and then an opportunity to sample the dishes, which included lentil soup, lentil tacos, lentils and rice, pork stew, pork roast, and roasted peppers.

The result was wonderful warm samplings, appreciative guests, and a desire to continue this collaboration in 2020. Thanks to Tim, Jeff, and the team at Meritus for making the sharing of food with families more practical, healthy, and meaningful.

ON THE MOVE

As the number of hungry grows and as TLC volun- teers continue to age, the Outreach Team, in collabora- tion with the Property Team, determined new room as- signments to allow easier access to the tons of food moved into and around the church for distribution. Food that had been stored two hallways away from the Food Pantry is now more available to staff, located in Jeff’s old office next to the Food Pantry. Jeff is down the hall next to the Lit- eracy Council Room. Thanks to all who helped make the moving possible during the holiday break!

Also, many thanks to Ed and Jane Drawbaugh for put- ting new flooring over the asbestos tiles of the Food Pan- try. It is a cleaner, safer, and padded(!) surface for volun- teers to use.

“And this is it. This is the life we get here on earth. We get to give away what we receive. We get to believe in each other. We get to forgive and be forgiven. We get to love imperfectly. And we never know what effect it will haveforyearstocome.Andallofit…allofitiscom- pletely worth it.”—Nadia Bolz-Weber, Lutheran minister